\chapter{Introduction}


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\section{Background and Motivation}Implementation of information technology (IT) into
organization becomes more prominent in developing countries, particularly in
public sector organizations. It is believed that adoption of IT provide many
advantages for the organization such as being able to enhance policy
formulation, promote participation, improve service quality, make planning more
effective, resources efficiency, and become a means of empowering citizens
through access to information and knowledge
\cite{Traunmiiller1996,Bhatnagar2000,Imran2005}. This is also applied to the
educational sector such as higher education institutions (HEIs). In fact, there
are fierce competition among HEIs either domestic or international, in providing
high quality facilities and services by utilizing IT. In addition, HEIs have
different environment circumstances from other type of organizations in which
they use IT for educational purposes as well as administrative
support\cite{Curry2002}. However, implementation of IT is not a simple
construct, many issues need to be considered \cite{Furuholt2005}. Moreover, if
the contexts are public organizations (public HEIs) in developing countries, it
has many limitation and multi dimensions, such as resources, financial, cultural
background.
% 
% and In fact, as
% reported by \citenoun{Heeks2002}, many information systems in developing countries are failed, either total or partial, and only minor are fall into success.
Various studies have been carried out in order to ensure better understanding
about IT implementation and adoption in public sector organization. Some of the
studies found that they shared the same knowledge about the barriers and
challenges to IT adoption in public sector in developing countries either in
government agency \cite{Imran2006,Al-busaidy2011,Weerakkody2009} or health
information systems\citenoun{Braa2001,Javier2004}.
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Although considerable attention has been devoted to this topic, rather less
research has been paid to examine IT implementation in public HEIs, especially
in developing countries. Many public HEIs have shared the same regulation,
condition and limitation as well as cultural background. Even they also shared
similar organizational behavior \cite{Curry2002}. Lately, to oversee the IT
implementation process in the organization, most of them established a dedicated
IT unit to handle that responsibility\cite{Imran2006}. Frequently, the IT unit
also act as executor of IT development and implementation processes. One of the
reasons behind this is the desire to maintain the continuity of the development
and implementation process in the organization. However, many challenges would
be faced, especially in the context of public HEIs, with their limitations. If
this situation cannot be recognized and handled properly, then this will
greatly disrupt the processes and affects the poor quality of IT services.
Obviously, this will influence not only the IT unit as the responsible
organization, but also other stakeholders, such as students as well as staffs of
the university, either in the administration processes or academic activities.
Poorly managed of IT management in public HEIs absolutely decrease the
competitiveness of the institution among others. Hence, it is important to
properly manage the IT implementation.
As described earlier, IT implementation also depends on condition and social
settings of the organizations. By understanding the social setting and condition
of the organizations will provide the capability to choose the appropriate
approach/IT tools based on their situation and hopefully can perform any
improvement processes. Obviously, it will help the organizations to make the IT
implementation process run smoothly. The interesting thing is, it could increase
the opportunity to adopt one successful approach on single organization to
others, even though not necessarily apply equally. 

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\section{Problem Description}

The main goal of this study is to explain and improve the IT implementation
process in public sector organization, particularly in higher education
institutions (HEIs) in developing countries. According to wikipedia.com
\footnote{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public\_university}, Public HEIs or
public universities is:
\begin{quote}
``\emph{ a university that is predominantly funded by public means through a
national or sub national government}''
\end{quote}
 
This study will be performed in one of Indonesia's public universities, namely
Udayana University which is expected to provide an insight about IT development and
implementation process in public sector organization especially in educational
institution in developing countries.
Several research questions are defined to attain the research goal as follows:
\begin{enumerate}
  \item[Q1.] What is the status of IT implementation in the institution under the case?
  \item[Q2.] What are the contributing factors that possibly hamper the process of IT implementation?
  \item[Q3.] What are the suitable strategies to improve the IT implementation?
  \item[Q4.] How the proposed approach can improve the development and   implementation process?
  \item[Q5.] What knowledge can be acquired from the proposed approach and its influence toward the organizational behavior?
  \item[Q6.] How the proposed approach can contribute to the IT organizational change in the organization?
\end{enumerate}
\section{Scope}

To clarify the topics to be discussed  in this study, the discussion will be
focused on the IT implementation process, especially in public university in
developing countries.
The discussion will be more emphasized on information systems implementation
rather than the network infrastructure and will be focused in Information
Technology (IT) unit. This study is more of an organizational change process
rather than software engineering.


\section{Methodology}

In order to attain the goals, this study is performed by an action research
approach, in combination with case study method. To gain understanding of the IT
implementation process at the selected institution and diagnosing the current
situation, interpretive single case study is performed. Any findings are then
interpreted in the light of established theory and contextual factors.
Furthermore, in order to improve the IT development and implementation process,
action of interventions then planned and performed  in order to discover the
specific phenomenon / knowledge from the case through observation of
participants' interaction. The outcomes are then evaluated to determine anyknowledge and improvement gained to the organization.\section{Thesis Outline}
This report is organized as follows: After Introduction, the theoretical basis
for this work will be presented, mainly recent study in the field of IT
implementation in developing countries, IT implementation and organizational
changes theories and strategies in HEIs and software development organization as
well as software project management. Then followed by description of employed
data collection and methodology as well as reflection of the researcher toward
the research implementation. Next, context of the case will be described in
detail. All the information found from the institution during data gathering is
explained and the action research cycle will be discussed in detail. Following
this, discussion and analysis of the findings in contrast with the recent
studies and theories are performed followed by implications and several
recommendations as well as improvement process. This report are finished with
conclusion, study limitations, and prospects for further research work.